Morality of the Mango
by Uzzle Cue
Summary: Morality and Ethics, Foreword. The hypothetical situations posed in this book are exercises meant to help the reader sculpt their nindo. These are questions I believe every ninja should ask themselves in the course of their careers, before they are forced into an encounter that demands an answer. - Ino reads a book by accident and learns something interesting about Sakura -


"Would you kill an innocent person if it meant saving your closest friend?"

Cicadas harmonized from the surrounding trees, giving sound to the heat of summer.

"What? That's a stupid question."

Sakura rolled from her back onto her belly, resting her chin on crossed forearms; her expression baleful. Ino sat up from her towel and used the book in her hand to protect her eyes from the sun she was basking in.

"Hey, It's not like I made it up, it's written in here." She fanned herself with the thin volume and reached for her juice box. When Ino found it empty she refocused her desires onto Sakura's half finished mango soda that sat sweating nearby, reluctantly sunbathing with them.

"Well, it's still stupid. What sort of book is that anyway?" Sakura peered at the creased spine, trying to decipher cracked kanji while it was in motion.

"Dunno. It was on my Dad's desk. _Morality and Ethics._ Huh. I just grabbed it to use so my face doesn't burn."

Sakura felt the barb of an easy insult hooked to the tip of her tongue; something to do with bacon. Instinctively she was always prepared to bait the blonde into a supremely satisfying bout of bickering. Unfortunately, ever since their re-connection after the exam, they had agreed to meet up every once in awhile and pretend to be civil to one another.

"Anyway, what's your answer?"

A cloud floated overhead, massive and benevolent, casting almost the entire breadth of Konohagakure into reprieve. Sakura chanced opening her eyes.

"What's the question again?"

"Um, let me see... would you kill an innocent person to save your best friend - sorry, _closest_ friend?"

Ino grinned and batted her eyelashes at the other girl. Sakura rolled her own eyes and reached back to adjust the strap to her bathing suit where it dug into her rib. She noted her stolen soda now, but found the heat too heavy to endeavor a retrieval operation.

"Are these questions meant specifically for shinobi or something?"

"I guess. Come on, stop stalling." Ino reached out to jab a freshly painted nail into her friends shoulder, warm, pink flesh turning white under the pressure.

"Okay, okay," Sakura turned her head onto it's side, resting her cheek on the pillow of her arms. "I guess...I would kill someone to save my closest friend."

"Really? An innocent person? Like a kid?" Ino stared at her in surprise, startling a nearby bird into vacating its roost on the roof.

Sakura scowled at Ino's tone, "What? Wouldn't you do anything you could to protect a precious person?"

"Yeah, but...killing someone who doesn't deserve it, that just sounds really wrong."

"I thought you'd say differently," Sakura murmured, something distantly related to shame winding around her gut and squeezing. For the longest time when she was little she'd been afraid to say her own opinions out loud and had opted to stay in the sanctuary of letting Ino make all the choices. It was bizarre to her to discover such a difference in their fundamental cores. They usually had more in common than Sakura liked.

"We're ninja, Ino, unpleasant stuff comes with the territory," Sakura said, flicking away a beetle that crawled to close, "Right?"

"No. I mean, I get what your saying, but I just - well, I think that if someone killed someone for me I would start to hate them, you know? I'd resent them for placing that burden on me." Ino laid back down, folding her hands over her stomach in contemplation, enjoying the respite from the rays.

Sakura thought she looked like a corpse, ready for a final burial; still pale in the grey cast of momentary shade. Tsunade had put her too often in the morgue lately, and the stream of autopsy and funereal preparations were getting to her.

Sakura flinched, and the sun conquered the cloud.

In the moment she flinched, the light brought life back to Ino's skin and took away the pallor of death.

Sakura resolutely closed her eyes and tried to breath as quietly as possible through the cloying humidity.

"I think that if I didn't save my best friend when I could, by any means necessary, I would hate myself more."

Ino's gaze, originally drawn by Sakura's voice, shifted away again without her permission, as if Sakura was the opposite to her own magnet. Absentmindedly, Ino shifted her stolen can from side to side, hearing the last bit of flat mango soda slosh around.

It was an unsatisfying sound.

Sakura rolled over once more onto her back and covered her eyes with her arm. Her forehead was damp, her hair starting to mat at the edges were the sweat gathered, pink to mauve.

Ino picked up _Morality and Ethics_ and tossed it over her shoulder through the balcony door, back into the loft that her father used as an office, lost to the chaos of his papers, scrolls, and files.

Sakura peeked out from beneath her forearm.

"What a stupid book," Ino said, and then scoffed, "who do they think they are asking such stupid questions?!"

"Ino," Sakura sighed, adopting an overly burdened tone, "You read the title, but you didn't see that your Dad wrote it?"

"What?!"

"You're such an idiot," Sakura said, grinning.

"Shut up," Ino threw her previously discarded juice box at the other girl and then she huffed dramatically, "I think we should go in, I'm starting to burn."

"Your kind tends to when there isn't any mud around."

"What was that?"

"Nothing! Come on, you owe me another soda." Sakura crawled to the door and used the frame to help herself up.

"I call the last mango!" Ino shouldered her aside already starting to patter rapidly down the steep staircase that lead to the first floor kitchen.

"No fair! I hate orange! Ino! _Ino!_"

_...-_-..._

_So...I'm not really sure what this is. _

_I was at a party and sitting around reading one of those books that asks you all those questions like, "If you were trapped in a cave with a stranger and running out of air, unsure when rescue might arrive, would you kill them to save yourself?" and it occurred to me that I'll probably never get put into a situation like that. But Ninja would, so those sort of books would actually be kind of mind expanding on a whole other level to someone with that sort of career. _

_I was also recently been thinking a bit about the differences between Sakura and Ino's characters (as they are an interesting example of friendly rivalry), they have a lot of similarities, as Sakura's personality had been shaped quite a lot from Ino's presence early on, but I'm interested in their differences and how they effect one another._

_I think Ino is more the type to move on from things, she's cautious and while impulsive, she has limits. Sakura has always seemed sort of limitless, she'll barrel into things and only stop when her emotions get the better of her. I honestly think she would **believe** she could kill an innocent person for someone she loves. Whether she actually could or not remains to be seen of course._

_I think that these two would interact seriously sometimes, and then they'd __revert to playful rivalry when things get too heavy,a sort of defense mechanism unspoken but agreed upon in their friendship._

_Anyway, that's how this little thing was born. Not that I think anyone is particularly interested. Sorry if I bored you, but I just like to take a minute at the end of writing something and explore some of the thoughts that went on behind it._

_However, this explanation and exploration of thought has run on long enough, _

_Later Taters_


End file.
